The city's industrial heartland rose like climbing skeletons of steel against the eastern mountains, belching smoke as they churned out weapons to arm the planet's armies. War was coming and every Isstvanian had to be ready to fight.

But no sight in the Choral City compared to the Sirenhold.

Not even the magnificence of the palace outshone the Sirenhold, its towering walls defining the

Choral City with their immensity. The brutal battlements diminished everything around them, and the sacred fortress of the Sirenhold humbled even the snow-capped peaks of the mountains. Within its walls, enormous tomb-spires reached for the skies, their walls encrusted with monumental sculptures that told the legends of Isstvan's mythical past.

The legends told that Isstvan himself had sung the world into being with music that could still be heard by the blessed Warsingers, and that he had borne countless children with whom he populated the first ages of the world. They became night and day, ocean and mountain, a thousand legends whose breath could be felt in every moment of every day in the Choral City.

Darker carvings told of the Lost Children, the sons and daughters who had forsaken their father and been banished to the blasted wasteland of the fifth planet, where they became monsters that burned with jealousy and raised black fortresses from which to brood upon their expulsion from paradise.

War, treachery, revelation and death; all marched around the Sirenhold in endless cycles of myth, the weight of their meaning pinning the Choral City to the soil of Isstvan III and infusing its every inhabitant with their sacred purpose.

The gods of Isstvan III were said to sleep in the Sirenhold, whispering their murderous plots in the nightmares of children and ancients.

For a time, the myths and legends had remained as distant as they had always been, but now they walked among the people of the Choral City, and every breath of wind shrieked that the Lost Children had returned.

Without knowing why, the populace of Isstvan III had armed and unquestioningly followed the orders of Vardus Praal to defend their city. An army of well-equipped soldiers awaited the invasion they had long been promised was coming in the western marches of the city, where the Warsingers had sung a formidable web of trenches into being.

Artillery pieces parked in the gleaming canyons of the city pointed their barrels westwards, set to pound any invaders into the ground before they reached the trenches. The warriors of the Choral City would then slaughter any that survived in carefully prepared crossfire.

The defences had been meticulously planned, protecting the city from attack from the west, the only direction in which an invasion could be launched.

Or so the soldiers manning the defences had been told.

The first omen was a fire in the sky that came with the dawn.

A scattering of falling stars streaked through the blood-red dawn, burning through the sky like fiery tears.

The sentries in the trenches saw them falling in bright spears of fire, the first burning object

smashing into the trenches amid a plume of mud and flame.

At the speed of thought, the word raced around the Choral City that the Lost Children had returned, that the prophecies of myth were coming true,

They were proven right when the drop-pods burst open and the Astartes of the Death Guard Legion emerged.

And the killing began.

PART TWO. THE CHORAL CITY

EIGHT

Soldiers from hell

Butchery

Betrayal

THIRTY SECONDS!' YELLED Vipus, his voice barely audible over the screaming jets as the drop-pod sliced through Isstvan Ill's atmosphere. The Astartes of Locasta were bathed in red light and for a moment Loken imagined what they would look like to the people of the Choral City when the assault began - warriors from another world, soldiers from hell.

'What's our landing point looking like?' shouted Loken.

Vipus glanced at the readout on a pict-screen mounted above his head. 'Drifting! We'll hit the target, but off-centre. I hate these things. Give me a stormbird any day!'

Loken didn't bother replying, barely able to hear Nero as the atmosphere thickened beneath the

drop-pod and the jets on its underside kicked in. The drop-pod shuddered and began heating up as the enormous forces pushing against it turned to fire and noise.

He sat through the last few minutes while everything around him was noise, unable to see the enemy he was about to fight and relinquishing control over his fate until the drop-pod hit.

Nero had been right when he said he had preferred an assault delivered by stormbird, the precise, surgical nature of an airborne assault far preferable to a warrior than this hurtling descent from above.

But the Warmaster had decided that the speartip would be deployed by drop-pod, reasoning -rightly, Loken admitted - that thousands of Astartes smashing into the defenders' midst without warning would be more psychologically devastating. Loken ran through the moment the drop-pod would hit in his mind, preparing himself for when the hatch charges would blow open.

He gripped his bolter tightly, and checked for the tenth time that his chainsword was in its scabbard at his side. Loken was ready.

'Ten seconds, Locasta,’ shouted Vipus.

Barely a second later, the drop-pod impacted with such force that Loken's head snapped back and suddenly the noise was gone and everything went black.

Lucius KILLED HIS first foe without even breaking stride.

The dead man's armour was like glass, shimmering and iridescent, and his halberd's blade was fashioned from the same reflective substance. A mask of stained glass covered his face, the mouth represented by leading and filled with teeth of gemlike triangles.

Lucius slid his sword clear, blood smoking from its edge, as the soldier slumped to the floor. A curved arch of marble shone red in the dawn's early light above him and a swirl of dust and debris drifted around the drop-pod he had just leapt from.

The Precentor's Palace stood before him, vast and astonishing, a stone flower with the spire at its centre like a spectacular twist of overlapping granite petals.

More drop-pods hammered into the ground behind him, the plaza around the palace's north entrances the main objective of the Emperor's Children. A nearby drop-pod blew open and Ancient Rylanor stepped from its red-lit interior, his assault cannon already cycling and tracking for targets. 'Nasicae!' yelled Lucius. To me!' Lucius saw a flash of coloured glass from inside the palace, movement beyond the sweeping stone panels of the entrance hall.

More palace guards reacted to the sudden, shocking assault, but contrary to what Lucius had been expecting, they weren't screaming or begging for

mercy. They weren't even fleeing, or standing stock still, numb with shock.

With a terrible war cry the palace guard charged and Lucius laughed, glad to be facing a foe with some backbone. He levelled his sword and ran towards them, Squad Nasicae following behind him, weapons at the ready.

A hundred palace guardians ran at them, resplendent in their glass armour. They formed a line before the Astartes, levelled their halberds, and opened fire.

Searing needles of silver filled the air around Lucius, gouging the armour of his shoulder guard and leg. Lucius lifted his sword arm to shield his head and the needles spat from the glowing blade of his sword. Where they hit the stone around the entrance it bubbled and hissed like acid.

One of Nasicae fell beside Lucius, one arm molten and his abdomen bubbling.

'Perfection and death!' cried Lucius, running through the white-hot silver needles. The Emperor's Children and the Palace Guard clashed with a sound like a million windows breaking the terrible screaming of the halberd-guns giving way to the clash of blade against armour and point-blank bolter fire